The present invention relates to an ink bag adapter, an adapter-equipped ink bag, and a printing apparatus, and for example, relates to an adapter attached to an ink bag that houses ink of an ink-jet type.
There is a large ink-jet type printer that ejects ink to a plastic sheet material such as, for example, a banner advertisement of a department store and signboard, and records (prints) characters and images thereon.
In this type of printer, the ink is supplied thereto by mounting an attachable/detachable ink cartridge thereon.
The ink cartridge is configured by storing the ink in an ink bag (containing bag) made of a flexible sheet material, and by housing the ink bag in a cartridge case made of a resin-made hard case.
A storage medium that stores information regarding the ink therein is attached to the ink bag, and the printer reads in the information to thereby make a determination, and prevents erroneous mounting of the ink cartridge.
Incidentally, it is conceivable that the ink bag of the ink takes a variety of postures in the cartridge case owing to the gravity and the inertial force. Accordingly, as illustrated in Japanese Patent No. 3838373, there is disclosed a technology for correcting a position of the storage medium in the cartridge case and preventing a positional shift of the storage medium.
This technology is one to attach, onto the ink bag, the storage medium and a board for positioning the storage medium, to fit a positioning hole formed in the board to a pin of the cartridge case, and to thereby position the storage medium to the cartridge case.
Heretofore, since the storage medium has been fixed to the flexible ink bag, a strict position correcting function has become necessary for an interface portion of the ink bag, which is connected to the storage medium, and there has been a problem that a structure and manufacturing process of the ink bag become complicated.